Suck My Dick: The Intentionally Hypersexualized Persona of Lil Kim
Lil Kim’s Use of The Erotic As An Embodiment of Black Feminism
By R Matthews
“Nigga FUCK YOU
(No, FUCK YOU BITCH)
Who you talking to?
(Why you actin’ like a BITCH?)
Cause y’all niggas ain’t shit
And if I was dude
I’d tell y’all to suck my dick”
— “Suck My Dick (2000)” by Lil Kim
So Beyoncé may be “Queen Bey”, but Lil Kim is the original Queen B(itch). Kimberly “Lil Kim” Denise Jones was a part of Notorious B.I.G’s protégé rap group, Junior M.A.F.I.A, but it was really her solo albums that made the young female MC rise to stardom.
But what was so unique about this MC? There were certainly other female MCs around: MC Lyte, Missy Elliott, Salt-N-Pepa, Queen Latifah, Lauryn Hill, etc. Lil Kim was different. She carefully crafted her persona to as a hypersexualized female who raps with the force of most male MCs. She and fellow female MC Foxy Brown had very similar rap styles and personas, which quickly brought them to the top of the rap game.
In my essay, I place Lil Kim’s “Suck My Dick” in conversation with bell hooks’ acclaimed essay entitled “Postmodern Blackness (1990)” as a means of depicting how Lil Kim is Black Feminism in practice. As the song title suggests, “Suck My Dick” is Lil Kim’s response to the misogynistic, sexist, and extremely sexualized world of hip hop. The track revolves around Lil Kim asserting her sexual dominance over other men. The song itself bends hip hop’s gender binary as she yells at Mr. Bristal, the man in the chorus of the song, to suck her dick. Much of the song is spent by referring to men using the same derogatory language that men use on women: “I treat y’all niggas like y’all treat us / No Doubt! Ay yo, yo / Come here so I can bust in ya mouth.”
But wait, Remi! How does this prove that Lil Kim embodies black feminism? All you’ve done is talk about is how extremely sexual she is. Well Lil Kim uses her sexuality for her own personal pleasure, which is exactly what black feminist and poet Audre Lorde says to do in “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power (1978)”. Throughout the song, Lil Kim provides countless examples of how she is using her sexuality as a source of her own pleasure. In the second verse, Lil Kim blatantly exclaims, “All I wanna do s get my pussy sucked (Nigga!).” Later in the third verse, she claims that all men can do for her is “suck [her] clit” as if that is their sole purpose to you: a sex object for her own personal pleasure.
Now although Lil Kim is perfectly comfortable in her own sexuality and image as a sex symbol in the music industry, some people saw her as a direct violation of the Politics of Respectability as conceptualized by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. A strong hip hop and rap protestor named C. Delores Tucker even tried to have Lil Kim’s music banned. Essence Magazine launched a “Take Back The Music” campaign that targeted how women were portrayed in rap, but also attacked Lil Kim.
In Anthology of Rap edited by Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois, the two suggest that hip hop studies should pay close attention to how women and female-identified artists have expanded the discussion of gender in sexuality in rap to fit to their own unique identities. He asks, “Are artists like Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown, who flaunt their sexuality in a manner similar to their male counterparts, doing subversive and revolutionary work or are they simply succumbing to commercial pressures or adhering to the template established by many young men who’ve made rap their own” (Bradley xxxix)? In response to this question, I think it is quite clear that this more than succumbing to commercial pressures. The depth and level of complexity that Lil Kim’s persona and music involves is more than a music industry puppeteer could ever do. Lil Kim continually breaks gender binaries and pushes against the toxic masculinity of hip hop culture with her sexuality.
